"Having shared storage is a game -changer for us. "

Media Zoo, the current EVCOM Production Company of the Year, explains how DDP shared storage has united their Avid and Adobe edit stations and made them a more efficient, responsive agency.

“As an agency, we have five specialities: film production, PR, learning, graphics and digital,” explained Media Zoo’s Head of Production, Jake McAuley. “We originally wanted storage to integrate our Avid suites, but we discovered that a lot of producers who self-shoot prefer Adobe Premiere Pro, so we had to be adaptable and build an environment that allowed us to share footage across different applications.”

The most intuitive, reliable media storage While they considered a number of different systems, Media Zoo eventually adopted an Ardis DDP Dynamic Drive Pool SAN, even though the solution was relatively new to the market at the time. “Our budget was tight but we needed to be able to edit in high definition,” said Jake. “The DDP solution was new to us, but Tony Rhodes from Jigsaw24 was able to take us through all the functions and provide support, so we were confident moving forward.”

Aside from price, the key factor in the DDP’s favour was its usability. “It’s far more user-friendly than other systems I’ve had experience with,” Jake told us. “The management tools are comprehensive, but they are not complex everything feels very intuitive, and it just works.”

Delivering magazine shows in a quarter of the time The storage has already started to earn its keep, helping Media Zoo deliver tight turnaround projects to corporate clients in a fraction of their usual time. “Having shared storage is a game-changer for us in the corporate world, because it means that we can deliver several projects to the same client using the same media. Recently we had to shoot and deliver three creatives for the same client within a week, and in the past that work would have all gone through one suite, because only one editor would have been able to work with the transcoded media, but now we can work on all three at the same time and make that deadline. “We also make magazine shows here, and our turnaround time on them has decreased fourfold because we’re not having to copy media across onto local drives. We’re able to get editors and graphics working across several different parts of the same project, then play out as soon as each individual has finished, rather than wait for media to be copied from one drive to the next.”

“Working with Jigsaw24 has been really fluid. We’re always able to get in touch with somebody, and their support on the technical side of things has been impressive – there’s not been an issue that they haven’t been able to solve promptly.” Jake McAuley, Head of Production, Media Zoo.

Thank you Jigsaw24 for sharing this story with us! To find out more about Media Zoo and their 100+ award-winning work, visit mediazoo.tv.